Mining Trip

1 week project for Prototype Studio class, Spring 2017. Prompt: Only use assets from a predetermined package.

The package of assets was quite restrictive - there were a few that caught my eye, however. The clock where the 2 was different from the other numbers, and the minimalist icons. The clock suggested to me a resource management game where you wanted to have as low a number as possible, but not exactly 2, as well as a system that would cycle your resources around a clock, so you would overflow back to a low number. The minimalist icons suggested a set of discrete actions for players to take. I had recently played a board game (can't recall the name) where players would delve into a mine to collect gems - each turn they would flip over a tile with a number of resources, then simultaneously reveal their decision to either take the current number all for themselves, or keep going. If both players decided to take the resources, they would split them, but once you decided to take the resources, you were locked out of future access to potentially better tiles later that round. This sort of structure seems interesting, and possibly a good fit for this game. In this game, you are presented with a sequence of numbers - for each number, you must choose between 3 options: "mine", "drink", or "bus". Mining will take the number shown and increase your resource counter by that much, drinking will decrease your resources by that number, and bussing will skip your turn, but give you exclusive access to the nest resource. If both players mine or both players drink, they'll split the resource. If one mines or drinks and the other busses, the miner/drinker will get full use of the resource. If one drinks and the other mines, the drinker will get full use of the resource and the miner will get nothing. If a players resource counter is ever exactly 2, they lose instantly. At the end of 9 rounds, the player with the least resources wins. 

This ends up being extremely opaque and difficult to understand, let alone reason and make strategic decisions about. I do think the idea of managing a resource that cycles around and avoiding particular values could be interesting, and I also think that simultaneous action games that go in different directions than RPS are potentially worth exploring more.